What: The ensemble's 30th anniversary concert. When: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 10. Where: E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, 198 Hill St., Akron. Tickets: $18, general ...

At his Detroit studio, Caribbean Mardi Gras Productions, Ralph Taylor has cleared away the giant Carnival costumes he designs and dusted off a dozen sets of steel drums he’d had in storage for years.

That was how Jeremy Caesar, 23, of Beltsville described what it takes to become a good musician, and that was him this past Saturday night at the annual Christmas concert of First United Methodist ...

The steel drum, also called the steel pan or just pan, is surely one of the most unusual and versatile musical instruments in the world. The clangy sound of a steel band performing during carnival in ...

A couple years after Joel Smales heard Ithaca College's Steel Band, he bought a steel pan of his own to play along with Binghamton High School's Jazz Ensemble. "Everybody loved it," said Smales, a ...

Despers USA practices on a big parking lot off Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, N.Y. Band members start wandering in around 6 or 7 p.m. and slowly take their places behind racks of steel drums. Like a ...

Outside are puddles and the chill of Corvallis in February. But inside, the metallic beats rolling through Benton Hall ring with the warmth of a Caribbean summer. It’s Thursday rehearsal time for the ...

All it took was a percussionist father and a natural curiosity for John Patti to begin playing the steel drums. As a 2- and 3-year-old, he began banging on his father's drums in their Baltimore home.